About “Champion”

“Champion” is the second single from Fall Out Boy’s 2017’s release MANIA. The song was released on June 23, 2017. While the band’s first comeback tune ‘Young And Menace’ seemed to suggest they were moving in a more electronic direction, Champion is closer to what the Chicagoan chart-toppers are known for: Alternative pop with powerful lyrics.

When the song was released, a message from Pete Wentz was posted on Fall Out Boy’s social media pages, stating:

Champion was first hinted at in a tweet on the 15th of June, and the song’s title and release date — the 22nd — were later confirmed when the band shared this image with their fans:

This was followed by a trailer, featuring scenes of people on skateboards and teasing a snippet of the song. The ‘visualiser’ music video that was released alongside the song stayed in a similar vein and featured the same llama characters from the Young And Menace video.

On December 15th of 2017, the band collaborated with RM of BTS to create a remix of the song.

Were the vocal runs towards the end of the song improvised?

“I do a lot of improvisation, actually. So this record, I recorded my vocals by myself instead of going in with someone else, and I think sometimes you get more of that singing-in-the-shower freedom, where you’re not scared of whatever. What I tend to do is, I record the song pretty strict and pretty straight, you know, just note, note, note, and then at the very end after I’m done I’ll just do a take where I go nuts and sing whatever. I think because I was totally alone in the room I was able to do things that I maybe would have been scared to do in front of people. So that’s where you get runs like that, [it’s] just because no one else was watching me.”